


Still Wings

by zeldadestry



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Community: 100_women, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-23
Updated: 2006-06-23
Packaged: 2017-10-10 01:48:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/93873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I killed a bird."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Wings

**Author's Note:**

> prompt 023, 'hair', for 100_women fanfic challenge

Dawn is here; the birds rush to speak and she listens. They do not even know what they say, and yet over and over they repeat it. Here I am, here I am, they call to each other, and when she holds out her hand and beckons, they fly to her. Clouds of them darken the sky, like night returning, beating wings and beating hearts surrounding her and she draws one into her palm, makes a fist, proves to herself she still has the power of death.

But what is the power of death without the power of life? What is it to extinguish, now that she can no longer reignite?

She is hesitant to open her hand, to see what she has done. Did the creature die with its eyes open or closed?

"What are you doing?" Wesley's voice is always like this, like the birds; he does not know what he says, he does not understand that the meaning is not in the words. I loathe you, despise you, he says. I will worship you as none ever have; of the countless slaves who have served you, there are none who want you as I want you.

"I killed a bird."

"Why?"

"Because that is what I do."

"Let me see," he says, and accepts her small burden into his own hands. His body sags forward, as though it were a terrible weight. With one fingertip, he strokes the still head, the wings. A touch of infinite gentleness, she muses, something she has never known, certainly something she has never offered to any being. Her own hand stretches out for him, to caress his hair as though he too were feathered.

"Don't," he says, before she can touch him. "Don't you dare." He drops the bird, looks at his hands and then at her with the same disgust, the same insult. Unclean, she thinks.

"I can make it fly again," she says, and demonstrates, lifts her hand, and makes the thing soar, not with its own wings but with her will. They stand together, watching, as it circles the garden.

"Stop," he says, and she does, and the bird plummets down to earth and neither averts their gaze as it crashes into the dirt.

"It's dead."

"And that troubles you?" She can not answer, will not admit to it. "Good," he says, and leaves.


End file.
